Refraction
by lavenderjacquard
Summary: Armin thought about physics, and how it related to girls trapped in prisms.


When Armin was little, he liked to dunk things in his glass of water to see how they changed. Really, it was whatever he could find - pens, spoons, knitting needles, once his father's glasses - and even though his mother scolded him, he still did it, because it was magical every time.

"Armin! You're going to ruin my favorite hairpin! How many times have I told you to stop?"

He learned later, after his parents had died and he drank his water without turning it into a science experiment, that the phenomenon was called refraction, where there was a change in direction of a wave passing from one medium to another. It had taken a full day of reading to understand the concept of a wave, but he didn't tell anyone when he did. His grandfather was too tired, Eren too busy, Mikasa too distracted.

Armin had remembered that discovery when he watched the Military Police haul Annie, crystallized, into a cart to wheel her underground, which could have been Purgatory as far as he knew. The dying sunlight had shone directly on her and the crystal erupted into glittering color, shooting neon greens and blazing reds onto the ground. The unicorn on the back of an MP's jacket turned a deep violet. Armin could no longer see Annie's face, but only the brilliant prism.

He thought the most beautiful thing he would ever see would be the ocean, but even when he was right at the edge of it, icy waves lapping his feet, he still thought of those colors.

Now, standing in her frigid cell in a dungeon far underground, the crystal was muted, monochrome, only shades of brown and gray. His single candle lighting the room elicited a few weak glitters from the crystal, but nothing to dazzle him like before.

Despite the feeble light Armin could see Annie, but she was never clear to him. The facets of the crystal always distorted her appearance. From one angle her nose was missing; from another, her right hand appeared monstrously large. Of course Armin could remember how she looked, before, when she was alive, but those details were getting fuzzy. Did she have frizzy hair, or smooth? Were her eyes an icy blue, or a deep blue, like the ocean?

And _alive_? Was she still alive? Or was she just some insect encased in amber, like his grandfather's prized possession, waiting for people thousands of years in the future to point at her and show to eager, curious children if they were very, very good?

Armin sat on the floor, the cold of the stone floor seeping into him. He faced her, but dropped his gaze to his fingernails. They were clean, but even though it was invisible to everyone else there would be blood under those fingernails, forever.

He picked up the seashell he'd left there many visits ago, tracing the spirals with his finger. He couldn't remember how many times he'd been there since he first left it for her. It was small, fragile, a mottled pink color; it too had shone in the light but was dull and lifeless in the dark. He'd picked it up from the ocean water and brought it back to her because the delicate color inside, a creamy white, had reminded him of her skin.

It wasn't always this way. Armin had barely paid attention to Annie during their training days, and had only taken an interest when he realized she and the Female Titan looked suspiciously alike. But by then everything was moving too quickly, and before he knew it Annie froze herself and half of Stohess was destroyed. He wished he'd looked up and taken a better look at her when they'd lured her into that tunnel, but it was hard to see her then, with him in the dark and the sun at her back.

Though, ever since he'd eaten Bertholdt and strange memories began creeping into his mind, Armin discovered he knew things about Annie he hadn't before. Like that she was left handed, and that she kept her hair up because she hated the feel of it on her neck. She also hated anything bitter, and didn't join the others sneaking sips of beer because the taste made her gag.

It was wrong; he didn't deserve to have those memories. He hadn't put in the effort to uncover those secrets. They were Bertholdt's, and it felt wrong, almost voyeuristic, to know them.

Armin was sorry about Bertholdt, truly. He couldn't imagine what it was like to infiltrate a completely different world and betray your own friends because your government ordered it. He'd overheard the others talking once about how horrible Bertholdt's face was before Armin was about to eat him, screaming so guttural and animalistic, eyes wet and legs flailing. Even though he was the enemy they'd all still felt pained, and they couldn't look away, even if they wanted to, because they owed it to Bertholdt. When Armin walked into the room they fell quiet and avoided his gaze.

He knew that if Levi had done what everyone said was the better choice and picked Commander Erwin over him, then things would not be going as horribly as they were now. Commander Erwin would be doing something, would have a plan, and would certainly not be wasting his time staring at an enemy encased in crystal who had not moved for years.

Armin still saw that decaying Titan in his dreams, bone exposed and gray, a single tear falling.

"Annie, I…" Armin didn't know what to say today. He usually told her what was going on in the world above them, but it felt redundant, since she obviously knew about Marley. He talked a lot about the others from their corps, how Connie had nearly twisted his ankle in a gopher hole and that Jean's mother had fallen ill, but that seemed inappropriate too, since they were all free on the surface while she was trapped underground. Occasionally he talked about his family, how he missed his parents and his grandfather, though he didn't know if she had parents or even grandparents. Everything he said to her was wrong, but somehow, the silence was worse.

"Everything's moving so fast now," Armin finally said, mouth dry. Maybe Annie had it best, sleeping through the years, safely encased in her diamond coffin. When he looked at Eren, who no longer reflected the light twice as bright as it struck him but instead sucked it all up like a black vortex, he thought he would like to crystalize himself, too. But, as the Colossal Titan, the military would not allow him that luxury. And would anyone take the time to visit him, if he were locked away in a glass prison for eternity? Though it pained him to consider, he didn't think Eren would.

He looked down and realized he was still clutching the shell in one hand. Still grasping it, he lifted his hand and brushed the backs of his fingers against the crystal. It was smooth and frigid; he felt a violent shiver down his spine. Every time he touched it, his fingerprints disappeared immediately. She refused his touch, refused his voice, refused him.

Suddenly he wasn't in the dungeon anymore, but outside somewhere, looking at a lake surrounded by pine trees. It was sunset, and the light reflecting off the ripples was blinding. There was someone standing at the shore, figure blurry and dark, changing shape with the shimmering water.

"Annie! Let's go!" someone shouted behind Armin. He recognized it as Reiner's voice.

The figure turned, and he finally made out the blonde hair. He couldn't see her face because his eyes were stinging, tearing up, from the glare of the sun. But he saw that she was holding something in her hand. A rock? Maybe even seashells made it out this far?

Annie turned around and walked towards them, her figure becoming clearer.

Armin stepped forward too, but it was wrong. The legs were too long, and he felt too high off the ground. This was Bertholdt's body, Bertholdt's memory. Armin was so disappointed he thought he might cry.

"Annie, what is that?" Reiner said, still behind them.

"Oh, just a rock," she said.

Annie was finally close enough that Armin saw her eyes were a pale blue, like the sky on a bitter winter morning. But did he realize this, or did Bertholdt?

"We need to get going," Reiner said, his voice further away.

Annie, now a few feet away, stopped and studied at the rock. It was the same color as Armin's seashell, speckled with pale pinks, mauves, and grays. Annie rolled it in her hand for a few seconds, but then whipped her arm back and threw the rock towards the lake. Her aim was true; the rock hit the water a few feet away from the shore, a vertical splash following it. She turned back to Reiner and walked towards him, past Armin, no, Bertholdt, without a glance back.

Armin felt his heart sink into his stomach, but this time he knew this feeling was all his own.

"Hey! No touching!"

Armin jumped back, shocked, and his hands twitched. He realized too late he dropped the seashell, and it shattered on the cold floor. The sound was sickening, and Armin swallowed a pained cry. The memory, and the seashell, were gone. Gravity was the one aspect of physics everyone knew. _How could I have done this, so stupid!_

"Excuse me, _sir_, you can't touch that girl," the voice said, closer this time. He turned to see Hitch, the girl who visited Annie even more than he did. Armin turned back to contemplate the broken shell, shards scattered across the floor.

"I see Prince Charming has come to rescue his princess, though you are a little short for the role," Hitch said, snarky as ever. She had a smirk on her face, like she'd caught him with a hand down his pants, but there was a melancholy look in her eyes. Armin knew she had memories of Annie locked away, too, but at least she'd made those memories when Annie was alive. And she had her own memories, and didn't steal someone else's, like he did.

"Ah, uh, it's not like that, if I touch the crystal I might get some memories from her, Titans work that way, uh, I wasn't trying to do anything improper…"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Hitch rolled her eyes. "Come on, you gotta see what's going on outside." She turned on one heel, swift, and ascended the stairs.

"Coming," Armin said, and he picked up his candle off the small table where he'd left it. But he stopped, candle raised midair, for a reason he couldn't quite articulate. Forcing his head to turn, his entire body stiff, he looked back at the broken shell. It would be gone the next time he came, by whomever was assigned to clean down here. Then the room would be sterile again. It had been a battle to convince the MPs to let him leave the shell down there with her in the first place.

Armin bent down over the pieces and lifted his candle above them. The pieces shone back at him, reflecting the light. The glow off of them was more subdued, less intense than what Annie's crystal had produced, but still beautiful. While Annie's prism had been deeply saturated, almost violent, this was gentle and soft.

The child inside of him imagined that whatever tiny spirit had been trapped inside the whorl of the shell might finally be free. Armin's lips curved into a small smile.

He looked up at Annie, but her eyes were still closed, face unchanged.

"Hurry it up!" Hitch said, exasperated.

"Coming!"

Armin stood up and ran for the stairs, but fingered the small shard he'd pocketed. He gazed back at Annie one last time before exiting, abandoning her to the darkness again.


End file.
